Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, by Plutarch

Pericles

Caesar once, seeing some wealthy strangers at Rome, carrying up and down with them in their arms and bosoms young
puppy-dogs and monkeys, embracing and making much of them, took occasion not unnaturally to ask whether the women in
their country were not used to bear children; by that prince-like reprimand gravely reflecting upon persons who spend
and lavish upon brute beasts that affection and kindness which nature has implanted in us to be bestowed on those of
our own kind. With like reason may we blame those who misuse that love of inquiry and observation which nature has
implanted in our souls, by expending it on objects unworthy of the attention either of their eyes or their ears, while
they disregard such as are excellent in themselves, and would do them good.

The mere outward sense, being passive in responding to the impression of the objects that come in its way and strike
upon it, perhaps cannot help entertaining and taking notice of everything that addresses it, be it what it will, useful
or unuseful; but, in the exercise of his mental perception, every man, if he chooses, has a natural power to turn
himself upon all occasions, and to change and shift with the greatest ease to what he shall himself judge desirable. So
that it becomes a man’s duty to pursue and make after the best and choicest of everything, that he may not only employ
his contemplation, but may also be improved by it. For as that color is most suitable to the eye whose freshness and
pleasantness stimulates and strengthens the sight, so a man ought to apply his intellectual perception to such objects
as, with the sense of delight, are apt to call it forth, and allure it to its own proper good and advantage.

Such objects we find in the acts of virtue, which also produce in the minds of mere readers about them, an emulation
and eagerness that may lead them on to imitation. In other things there does not immediately follow upon the admiration
and liking of the thing done, any strong desire of doing the like. Nay, many times, on the very contrary, when we are
pleased with the work, we slight and set little by the workman or artist himself, as, for instance, in perfumes and
purple dyes, we are taken with the things themselves well enough, but do not think dyers and perfumers otherwise than
low and sordid people. It was not said amiss by Antisthenes, when people told him that one Ismenias was an excellent
piper, “It may be so,” said he, “but he is but a wretched human being, otherwise he would not have been an excellent
piper.” And king Philip, to the same purpose, told his son Alexander, who once at a merry-meeting played a piece of
music charmingly and skillfully, “Are you not ashamed, son, to play so well?” For it is enough for a king, or prince to
find leisure sometimes to hear others sing, and he does the muses quite honor enough when he pleases to be but present,
while others engage in such exercises and trials of skill.

He who busies himself in mean occupations produces, in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an
evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good. Nor did any generous and ingenuous
young man, at the sight of the statue of Jupiter at Pisa, ever desire to be a Phidias, or, on seeing that of Juno at
Argos, long to be a Polycletus, or feel induced by his pleasure in their poems to wish to be an Anacreon or Philetas or
Archilochus. For it does not necessarily follow, that, if a piece of work please for its gracefulness, therefore he
that wrought it deserves our admiration. Whence it is that neither do such things really profit or advantage the
beholders, upon the sight of which no zeal arises for the imitation of them, nor any impulse or inclination, which may
prompt any desire or endeavor of doing the like. But virtue, by the bare statement of its actions, can so affect men’s
minds as to create at once both admiration of the things done and desire to imitate the doers of them. The goods of
fortune we would possess and would enjoy; those of virtue we long to practice and exercise; we are content to receive
the former from others, the latter we wish others to experience from us. Moral good is a practical stimulus; it is no
sooner seen, than it inspires an impulse to practice; and influences the mind and character not by a mere imitation
which we look at, but, by the statement of the fact, creates a moral purpose which we form.

And so we have thought fit to spend our time and pains in writing of the lives of famous persons; and have composed
this tenth book upon that subject, containing the life of Pericles, and that of Fabius Maximus, who carried on the war
against Hannibal, men alike, as in their other virtues and good parts, so especially in their mild and upright temper
and demeanor, and in that capacity to bear the cross-grained humors of their fellow-citizens and colleagues in office
which made them both most useful and serviceable to the interests of their countries. Whether we take a right aim at
our intended purpose, it is left to the reader to judge by what he shall here find.

Pericles was of the tribe Acamantis, and the township Cholargus, of the noblest birth both on his father’s and
mother’s side. Xanthippus, his father, who defeated the king of Persia’s generals in the battle at Mycale, took to wife
Agariste, the grandchild of Clisthenes, who drove out the sons of Pisistratus, and nobly put an end to their tyrannical
usurpation, and moreover made a body of laws, and settled a model of government admirably tempered and suited for the
harmony and safety of the people.

His mother, being near her time, fancied in a dream that she was brought to bed of a lion, and a few days after was
delivered of Pericles, in other respects perfectly formed, only his head was somewhat longish and out of proportion.
For which reason almost all the images and statues that were made of him have the head covered with a helmet, the
workmen apparently being willing not to expose him. The poets of Athens called him Schinocephalos, or squill-head, from
schinos, a squill, or sea-onion. One of the comic poets, Cratinus, in the Chirons, tells us that —

Old Chronos once took queen Sedition to wife;
Which two brought to life
That tyrant far-famed,
Whom the gods the supreme skull-compeller have named.

And, in the Nemesis, addresses him —

Come, Jove, thou head of gods.

And a second, Teleclides, says, that now, in embarrassment with political difficulties, he sits in the
city —

Fainting underneath the load
Of his own head; and now abroad,
From his huge gallery of a pate,
Sends forth trouble to the state.

And a third, Eupolis, in the comedy called the Demi, in a series of questions about each of the demagogues, whom he
makes in the play to come up from hell, upon Pericles being named last, exclaims —

And here by way of summary, now we’ve done,
Behold, in brief, the heads of all in one.

The master that taught him music, most authors are agreed, was Damon (whose name, they say, ought to be pronounced
with the first syllable short). Though Aristotle tells us that he was thoroughly practiced in all accomplishments of
this kind by Pythoclides. Damon, it is not unlikely, being a sophist, out of policy, sheltered himself under the
profession of music to conceal from people in general his skill in other things, and under this pretense attended
Pericles, the young athlete of politics, so to say, as his training-master in these exercises. Damon’s lyre, however,
did not prove altogether a successful blind; he was banished the country by ostracism for ten years, as a dangerous
intermeddler and a favorer of arbitrary power, and, by this means, gave the stage occasion to play upon him. As, for
instance, Plato, the comic poet, introduces a character, who questions him —

Tell me, if you please,
Since you’re the Chiron who taught Pericles.

Pericles, also, was a hearer of Zeno, the Eleatic, who treated of natural philosophy in the same manner as
Parmenides did, but had also perfected himself in an art of his own for refuting and silencing opponents in argument;
as Timon of Phlius describes it, —

Also the two-edged tongue of mighty Zeno, who,
Say what one would, could argue it untrue.

But he that saw most of Pericles, and furnished him most especially with a weight and grandeur of sense, superior to
all arts of popularity, and in general gave him his elevation and sublimity of purpose and of character, was Anaxagoras
of Clazomenae; whom the men of those times called by the name of Nous, that is, mind, or intelligence, whether in
admiration of the great and extraordinary gift he displayed for the science of nature, or because that he was the first
of the philosophers who did not refer the first ordering of the world to fortune or chance, nor to necessity or
compulsion, but to a pure, unadulterated intelligence, which in all other existing mixed and compound things acts as a
principle of discrimination, and of combination of like with like.

For this man, Pericles entertained an extraordinary esteem and admiration, and, filling himself with this lofty,
and, as they call it, up-in-the-air sort of thought, derived hence not merely, as was natural, elevation of purpose and
dignity of language, raised far above the base and dishonest buffooneries of mob-eloquence, but, besides this, a
composure of countenance, and a serenity and calmness in all his movements, which no occurrence whilst he was speaking
could disturb, a sustained and even tone of voice, and various other advantages of a similar kind, which produced the
greatest effect on his hearers. Once, after being reviled and ill-spoken of all day long in his own hearing by some
vile and abandoned fellow in the open marketplace, where he was engaged in the dispatch of some urgent affair, he
continued his business in perfect silence, and in the evening returned home composedly, the man still dogging him at
the heels, and pelting him all the way with abuse and foul language; and stepping into his house, it being by this time
dark, he ordered one of his servants to take a light, and to go along with the man and see him safe home. Ion, it is
true, the dramatic poet, says that Pericles’s manner in company was somewhat over-assuming and pompous; and that into
his high bearing there entered a good deal of slightingness and scorn of others; he reserves his commendation for
Cimon’s ease and pliancy and natural grace in society. Ion, however, who must needs make virtue, like a show of
tragedies, include some comic scenes, we shall not altogether rely upon; Zeno used to bid those who called Pericles’s
gravity the affectation of a charlatan, to go and affect the like themselves; inasmuch as this mere counterfeiting
might in time insensibly instill into them a real love and knowledge of those noble qualities.

Nor were these the only advantages which Pericles derived from Anaxagoras’s acquaintance; he seems also to have
become, by his instructions, superior to that superstition with which an ignorant wonder at appearances, for example,
in the heavens possesses the minds of people unacquainted with their causes, eager for the supernatural, and excitable
through an inexperience which the knowledge of natural causes removes, replacing wild and timid superstition by the
good hope and assurance of an intelligent piety.

There is a story, that once Pericles had brought to him from a country farm of his, a ram’s head with one horn, and
that Lampon, the diviner, upon seeing the horn grow strong and solid out of the midst of the forehead, gave it as his
judgment, that, there being at that time two potent factions, parties, or interests in the city, the one of Thucydides
and the other of Pericles, the government would come about to that one of them in whose ground or estate this token or
indication of fate had shown itself. But that Anaxagoras, cleaving the skull in sunder, showed to the bystanders that
the brain had not filled up its natural place, but being oblong, like an egg, had collected from all parts of the
vessel which contained it, in a point to that place from whence the root of the horn took its rise. And that, for that
time, Anaxagoras was much admired for his explanation by those that were present; and Lampon no less a little while
after, when Thucydides was overpowered, and the whole affairs of the state and government came into the hands of
Pericles.

And yet, in my opinion, it is no absurdity to say that they were both in the right, both natural philosopher and
diviner, one justly detecting the cause of this event, by which it was produced, the other the end for which it was
designed. For it was the business of the one to find out and give an account of what it was made, and in what manner
and by what means it grew as it did; and of the other to foretell to what end and purpose it was so made, and what it
might mean or portend. Those who say that to find out the cause of a prodigy is in effect to destroy its supposed
signification as such, do not take notice that, at the same time, together with divine prodigies, they also do away
with signs and signals of human art and concert, as, for instance, the clashings of quoits, fire-beacons, and the
shadows on sun-dials, every one of which things has its cause, and by that cause and contrivance is a sign of something
else. But these are subjects, perhaps, that would better befit another place.

Pericles, while yet but a young man, stood in considerable apprehension of the people, as he was thought in face and
figure to be very like the tyrant Pisistratus, and those of great age remarked upon the sweetness of his voice, and his
volubility and rapidity in speaking, and were struck with amazement at the resemblance. Reflecting, too, that he had a
considerable estate, and was descended of a noble family, and had friends of great influence, he was fearful all this
might bring him to be banished as a dangerous person; and for this reason meddled not at all with state affairs, but in
military service showed himself of a brave and intrepid nature. But when Aristides was now dead, and Themistocles
driven out, and Cimon was for the most part kept abroad by the expeditions he made in parts out of Greece, Pericles,
seeing things in this posture, now advanced and took his side, not with the rich and few, but with the many and poor,
contrary to his natural bent, which was far from democratical; but, most likely, fearing he might fall under suspicion
of aiming at arbitrary power, and seeing Cimon on the side of the aristocracy, and much beloved by the better and more
distinguished people, he joined the party of the people, with a view at once both to secure himself and procure means
against Cimon.

He immediately entered, also, on quite a new course of life and management of his time. For he was never seen to
walk in any street but that which led to the marketplace and the council-hall, and he avoided invitations of friends to
supper, and all friendly visiting and intercourse whatever; in all the time he had to do with the public, which was not
a little, he was never known to have gone to any of his friends to a supper, except that once when his near kinsman
Euryptolemus married, he remained present till the ceremony of the drink-offering, and then immediately rose from table
and went his way. For these friendly meetings are very quick to defeat any assumed superiority, and in intimate
familiarity an exterior of gravity is hard to maintain. Real excellence, indeed, is most recognized when most openly
looked into; and in really good men, nothing which meets the eyes of external observers so truly deserves their
admiration, as their daily common life does that of their nearer friends. Pericles, however, to avoid any feeling of
commonness, or any satiety on the part of the people, presented himself at intervals only, not speaking to every
business, nor at all times coming into the assembly, but, as Critolaus says, reserving himself, like the Salaminian
galley, for great occasions, while matters of lesser importance were dispatched by friends or other speakers under his
direction. And of this number we are told Ephialtes made one, who broke the power of the council of Areopagus, giving
the people, according to Plato’s expression, so copious and so strong a draught of liberty, that, growing wild and
unruly, like an unmanageable horse, it, as the comic poets say, —

“ — got beyond all keeping in, Champing at Euboea, and among the islands leaping in.”

The style of speaking most consonant to his form of life and the dignity of his views he found, so to say, in the
tones of that instrument with which Anaxagoras had furnished him; of his teaching he continually availed himself, and
deepened the colors of rhetoric with the dye of natural science. For having, in addition to his great natural genius,
attained, by the study of nature, to use the words of the divine Plato, this height of intelligence, and this universal
consummating power, and drawing hence whatever might be of advantage to him in the art of speaking, he showed himself
far superior to all others. Upon which account, they say, he had his nickname given him, though some are of opinion he
was named the Olympian from the public buildings with which he adorned the city; and others again, from his great power
in public affairs, whether of war or peace. Nor is it unlikely that the confluence of many attributes may have
conferred it on him. However, the comedies represented at the time, which, both in good earnest and in merriment, let
fly many hard words at him, plainly show that he got that appellation especially from his speaking; they speak of his
“thundering and lightning” when he harangued the people, and of his wielding a dreadful thunderbolt in his tongue.

A saying also of Thucydides, the son of Melesias, stands on record, spoken by him by way of pleasantry upon
Pericles’s dexterity. Thucydides was one of the noble and distinguished citizens, and had been his greatest opponent;
and, when Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians, asked him whether he or Pericles were the better wrestler, he
made this answer: “When I,” said he, “have thrown him and given him a fair fall, by persisting that he had no fall, he
gets the better of me, and makes the bystanders, in spite of their own eyes, believe him.” The truth, however, is, that
Pericles himself was very careful what and how he was to speak, insomuch that, whenever he went up to the hustings, he
prayed the gods that no one word might unawares slip from him unsuitable to the matter and the occasion.

He has left nothing in writing behind him, except some decrees; and there are but very few of his sayings recorded;
one, for example, is, that he said Aegina must, like a gathering in a man’s eye, be removed from Piraeus; and another,
that he said he saw already war moving on its way towards them out of Peloponnesus. Again, when on a time Sophocles,
who was his fellow-commissioner in the generalship, was going on board with him, and praised the beauty of a youth they
met with in the way to the ship, “Sophocles,” said he, “a general ought not only to have clean hands, but also clean
eyes.” And Stesimbrotus tells us, that, in his encomium on those who fell in battle at Samos, he said they were become
immortal, as the gods were. “For,” said he, “we do not see them themselves, but only by the honors we pay them, and by
the benefits they do us, attribute to them immortality; and the like attributes belong also to those that die in the
service of their country.”

Since Thucydides describes the rule of Pericles as an aristocratical government, that went by the name of a
democracy, but was, indeed, the supremacy of a single great man, while many others say, on the contrary, that by him
the common people were first encouraged and led on to such evils as appropriations of subject territory; allowances for
attending theaters, payments for performing public duties, and by these bad habits were, under the influence of his
public measures, changed from a sober, thrifty people, that maintained themselves by their own labors, to lovers of
expense, intemperance, and license, let us examine the cause of this change by the actual matters of fact.

At the first, as has been said, when he set himself against Cimon’s great authority, he did caress the people.
Finding himself come short of his competitor in wealth and money, by which advantages the other was enabled to take
care of the poor, inviting every day some one or other of the citizens that was in want to supper, and bestowing
clothes on the aged people, and breaking down the hedges and enclosures of his grounds, that all that would might
freely gather what fruit they pleased, Pericles, thus outdone in popular arts, by the advice of one Damonides of Oea,
as Aristotle states, turned to the distribution of the public moneys; and in a short time having bought the people
over, what with moneys allowed for shows and for service on juries, and what with other forms of pay and largess, he
made use of them against the council of Areopagus, of which he himself was no member, as having never been appointed by
lot either chief archon, or lawgiver, or king, or captain. For from of old these offices were conferred on persons by
lot, and they who had acquitted themselves duly in the discharge of them were advanced to the court of Areopagus. And
so Pericles, having secured his power and interest with the populace, directed the exertions of his party against this
council with such success, that most of those causes and matters which had been used to be tried there, were, by the
agency of Ephialtes, removed from its cognizance, Cimon, also, was banished by ostracism as a favorer of the
Lacedaemonians and a hater of the people, though in wealth and noble birth he was among the first, and had won several
most glorious victories over the barbarians, and had filled the city with money and spoils of war; as is recorded in
the history of his life. So vast an authority had Pericles obtained among the people.

The ostracism was limited by law to ten years; but the Lacedaemonians, in the mean time, entering with a great army
into the territory of Tanagra, and the Athenians going out against them, Cimon, coming from his banishment before his
time was out, put himself in arms and array with those of his fellow-citizens that were of his own tribe, and desired
by his deeds to wipe off the suspicion of his favoring the Lacedaemonians, by venturing his own person along with his
country-men. But Pericles’s friends, gathering in a body, forced him to retire as a banished man. For which cause also
Pericles seems to have exerted himself more in that than in any battle, and to have been conspicuous above all for his
exposure of himself to danger. All Cimon’s friends, also, to a man, fell together side by side, whom Pericles had
accused with him of taking part with the Lacedaemonians. Defeated in this battle on their own frontiers, and expecting
a new and perilous attack with return of spring, the Athenians now felt regret and sorrow for the loss of Cimon, and
repentance for their expulsion of him. Pericles, being sensible of their feelings, did not hesitate or delay to gratify
it, and himself made the motion for recalling him home. He, upon his return, concluded a peace betwixt the two cities;
for the Lacedaemonians entertained as kindly feelings towards him as they did the reverse towards Pericles and the
other popular leaders.

Yet some there are who say that Pericles did not propose the order for Cimon’s return till some private articles of
agreement had been made between them, and this by means of Elpinice, Cimon’s sister; that Cimon, namely, should go out
to sea with a fleet of two hundred ships, and be commander-in-chief abroad, with a design to reduce the king of
Persia’s territories, and that Pericles should have the power at home.

This Elpinice, it was thought, had before this time procured some favor for her brother Cimon at Pericles’s hands,
and induced him to be more remiss and gentle in urging the charge when Cimon was tried for his life; for Pericles was
one of the committee appointed by the commons to plead against him. And when Elpinice came and besought him in her
brother’s behalf, he answered, with a smile, “O Elpinice, you are too old a woman to undertake such business as this.”
But, when he appeared to impeach him, he stood up but once to speak, merely to acquit himself of his commission, and
went out of court, having done Cimon the least prejudice of any of his accusers.

How, then, can one believe Idomeneus, who charges Pericles as if he had by treachery procured the murder of
Ephialtes, the popular statesman, one who was his friend, and of his own party in all his political course, out of
jealousy, forsooth, and envy of his great reputation? This historian, it seems, having raked up these stories, I know
not whence, has befouled with them a man who, perchance, was not altogether free from fault or blame, but yet had a
noble spirit, and a soul that was bent on honor; and where such qualities are, there can no such cruel and brutal
passion find harbor or gain admittance. As to Ephialtes, the truth of the story, as Aristotle has told it, is this:
that having made himself formidable to the oligarchical party, by being an uncompromising asserter of the people’s
rights in calling to account and prosecuting those who any way wronged them, his enemies, lying in wait for him, by the
means of Aristodicus the Tanagraean, privately dispatched him.

Cimon, while he was admiral, ended his days in the Isle of Cyprus. And the aristocratical party, seeing that
Pericles was already before this grown to be the greatest and foremost man of all the city, but nevertheless wishing
there should be somebody set up against him, to blunt and turn the edge of his power, that it might not altogether
prove a monarchy, put forward Thucydides of Alopece, a discreet person, and a near kinsman of Cimon’s, to conduct the
opposition against him; who, indeed, though less skilled in warlike affairs than Cimon was, yet was better versed in
speaking and political business, and keeping close guard in the city, and engaging with Pericles on the hustings, in a
short time brought the government to an equality of parties. For he would not suffer those who were called the honest
and good (persons of worth and distinction) to be scattered up and down and mix themselves and be lost among the
populace, as formerly, diminishing and obscuring their superiority amongst the masses; but taking them apart by
themselves and uniting them in one body, by their combined weight he was able, as it were upon the balance, to make a
counter-poise to the other party.

For, indeed, there was from the beginning a sort of concealed split, or seam, as it might be in a piece of iron,
marking the different popular and aristocratical tendencies; but the open rivalry and contention of these two opponents
made the gash deep, and severed the city into the two parties of the people and the few. And so Pericles, at that time
more than at any other, let loose the reins to the people, and made his policy subservient to their pleasure,
contriving continually to have some great public show or solemnity, some banquet, or some procession or other in the
town to please them, coaxing his countrymen like children, with such delights and pleasures as were not, however,
unedifying. Besides that every year he sent out threescore galleys, on board of which there went numbers of the
citizens, who were in pay eight months, learning at the same time and practicing the art of seamanship.

He sent, moreover, a thousand of them into the Chersonese as planters, to share the land among them by lot, and five
hundred more into the isle of Naxos, and half that number to Andros, a thousand into Thrace to dwell among the
Bisaltae, and others into Italy, when the city Sybaris, which now was called Thurii, was to be repeopled. And this he
did to ease and discharge the city of an idle, and, by reason of their idleness, a busy, meddling crowd of people; and
at the same time to meet the necessities and restore the fortunes of the poor townsmen, and to intimidate, also, and
check their allies from attempting any change, by posting such garrisons, as it were, in the midst of them.

That which gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens, and the greatest admiration and even astonishment
to all strangers, and that which now is Greece’s only evidence that the power she boasts of and her ancient wealth are
no romance or idle story, was his construction of the public and sacred buildings. Yet this was that of all his actions
in the government which his enemies most looked askance upon and caviled at in the popular assemblies, crying out how
that the commonwealth of Athens had lost its reputation and was ill-spoken of abroad for removing the common treasure
of the Greeks from the isle of Delos into their own custody; and how that their fairest excuse for so doing, namely,
that they took it away for fear the barbarians should seize it, and on purpose to secure it in a safe place, this
Pericles had made unavailable, and how that “Greece cannot but resent it as an insufferable affront, and consider
herself to be tyrannized over openly, when she sees the treasure, which was contributed by her upon a necessity for the
war, wantonly lavished out by us upon our city, to gild her all over, and to adorn and set her forth, as it were some
vain woman, hung round with precious stones and figures and temples, which cost a world of money.”

Pericles, on the other hand, informed the people, that they were in no way obliged to give any account of those
moneys to their allies, so long as they maintained their defense, and kept off the barbarians from attacking them;
while in the meantime they did not so much as supply one horse or man or ship, but only found money for the service;
“which money,” said he, “is not theirs that give it, but theirs that receive it, if so be they perform the conditions
upon which they receive it.” And that it was good reason, that, now the city was sufficiently provided and stored with
all things necessary for the war, they should convert the overplus of its wealth to such undertakings, as would
hereafter, when completed, give them eternal honor, and, for the present, while in process, freely supply all the
inhabitants with plenty. With their variety of workmanship and of occasions for service, which summon all arts and
trades and require all hands to be employed about them, they do actually put the whole city, in a manner, into
state-pay; while at the same time she is both beautified and maintained by herself. For as those who are of age and
strength for war are provided for and maintained in the armaments abroad by their pay out of the public stock, so, it
being his desire and design that the undisciplined mechanic multitude that stayed at home should not go without their
share of public salaries, and yet should not have them given them for sitting still and doing nothing, to that end he
thought fit to bring in among them, with the approbation of the people, these vast projects of buildings and designs of
works, that would be of some continuance before they were finished, and would give employment to numerous arts, so that
the part of the people that stayed at home might, no less than those that were at sea or in garrisons or on
expeditions, have a fair and just occasion of receiving the benefit and having their share of the public moneys.

The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony cypress-wood; and the arts or trades that wrought and fashioned
them were smiths and carpenters, molders, founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers, goldsmiths, ivory-workers,
painters, embroiderers, turners; those again that conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and mariners and
ship-masters by sea, and by land, cartwrights, cattle-breeders, waggoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoe-makers and
leather-dressers, roadmakers, miners. And every trade in the same nature, as a captain in an army has his particular
company of soldiers under him, had its own hired company of journeymen and laborers belonging to it banded together as
in array, to be as it were the instrument and body for the performance of the service. Thus, to say all in a word, the
occasions and services of these public works distributed plenty through every age and condition.

As then grew the works up, no less stately in size than exquisite in form, the workmen striving to outvie the
material and the design with the beauty of their workmanship, yet the most wonderful thing of all was the rapidity of
their execution. Undertakings, any one of which singly might have required, they thought, for their completion, several
successions and ages of men, were every one of them accomplished in the height and prime of one man’s political
service. Although they say, too, that Zeuxis once, having heard Agatharchus the painter boast of dispatching his work
with speed and ease, replied, “I take a long time.” For ease and speed in doing a thing do not give the work lasting
solidity or exactness of beauty; the expenditure of time allowed to a man’s pains beforehand for the production of a
thing is repaid by way of interest with a vital force for its preservation when once produced. For which reason
Pericles’s works are especially admired, as having been made quickly, to last long. For every particular piece of his
work was immediately, even at that time, for its beauty and elegance, antique; and yet in its vigor and freshness looks
to this day as if it were just executed. There is a sort of bloom of newness upon those works of his, preserving them
from the touch of time, as if they had some perennial spirit and undying vitality mingled in the composition of
them.

Phidias had the oversight of all the works, and was surveyor-general, though upon the various portions other great
masters and workmen were employed. For Callicrates and Ictinus built the Parthenon; the chapel at Eleusis, where the
mysteries were celebrated, was begun by Coroebus, who erected the pillars that stand upon the floor or pavement, and
joined them to the architraves; and after his death Metagenes of Xypete added the frieze and the upper line of columns;
Xenocles of Cholargus roofed or arched the lantern on the top of the temple of Castor and Pollux; and the long wall,
which Socrates says he himself heard Pericles propose to the people, was undertaken by Callicrates. This work

Cratinus ridicules, as long in finishing, —

’Tis long since Pericles, if words would do it, Talk’d up the wall; yet adds not one mite to it.

The Odeum, or music-room, which in its interior was full of seats and ranges of pillars, and outside had its roof
made to slope and descend from one single point at the top, was constructed, we are told, in imitation of the king of
Persia’s Pavilion; this likewise by Pericles’s order; which Cratinus again, in his comedy called The Thracian Women,
made an occasion of raillery, —

So, we see here,
Jupiter Long-pate Pericles appear,
Since ostracism time, he’s laid aside his head,
And wears the new Odeum in its stead.

Pericles, also, eager for distinction, then first obtained the decree for a contest in musical skill to be held
yearly at the Panathenaea, and he himself, being chosen judge, arranged the order and method in which the competitors
should sing and play on the flute and on the harp. And both at that time, and at other times also, they sat in this
music-room to see and hear all such trials of skill.

The propylaea, or entrances to the Acropolis, were finished in five years’ time, Mnesicles being the principal
architect. A strange accident happened in the course of building, which showed that the goddess was not averse to the
work, but was aiding and cooperating to bring it to perfection. One of the artificers, the quickest and the handiest
workman among them all, with a slip of his foot fell down from a great height, and lay in a miserable condition, the
physicians having no hopes of his recovery. When Pericles was in distress about this, Minerva appeared to him at night
in a dream, and ordered a course of treatment, which he applied, and in a short time and with great ease cured the man.
And upon this occasion it was that he set up a brass statue of Minerva, surnamed Health, in the citadel near the altar,
which they say was there before. But it was Phidias who wrought the goddess’s image in gold, and he has his name
inscribed on the pedestal as the workman of it; and indeed the whole work in a manner was under his charge, and he had,
as we have said already, the oversight over all the artists and workmen, through Pericles’s friendship for him; and
this, indeed, made him much envied, and his patron shamefully slandered with stories, as if Phidias were in the habit
of receiving, for Pericles’s use, freeborn women that came to see the works. The comic writers of the town, when they
had got hold of this story, made much of it, and bespattered him with all the ribaldry they could invent, charging him
falsely with the wife of Menippus, one who was his friend and served as lieutenant under him in the wars; and with the
birds kept by Pyrilampes, an acquaintance of Pericles, who, they pretended, used to give presents of peacocks to
Pericles’s female friends. And how can one wonder at any number of strange assertions from men whose whole lives were
devoted to mockery, and who were ready at any time to sacrifice the reputation of their superiors to vulgar envy and
spite, as to some evil genius, when even Stesimbrotus the Thasian has dared to lay to the charge of Pericles a
monstrous and fabulous piece of criminality with his son’s wife? So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out
the truth of anything by history, when, on the one hand, those who afterwards write it find long periods of time
intercepting their view, and, on the other hand, the contemporary records of any actions and lives, partly through envy
and ill-will, partly through favor and flattery, pervert and distort truth.

When the orators, who sided with Thucydides and his party, were at one time crying out, as their custom was, against
Pericles, as one who squandered away the public money, and made havoc of the state revenues, he rose in the open
assembly and put the question to the people, whether they thought that he had laid out much; and they saying, “Too
much, a great deal.” “Then,” said he, “since it is so, let the cost not go to your account, but to mine; and let the
inscription upon the buildings stand in my name.” When they heard him say thus, whether it were out of a surprise to
see the greatness of his spirit, or out of emulation of the glory of the works, they cried aloud, bidding him to spend
on, and lay out what he thought fit from the public purse, and to spare no cost, till all were finished.

At length, coming to a final contest with Thucydides, which of the two should ostracize the other out of the
country, and having gone through this peril, he threw his antagonist out, and broke up the confederacy that had been
organized against him. So that now all schism and division being at an end, and the city brought to evenness and unity,
he got all Athens and all affairs that pertained to the Athenians into his own hands, their tributes, their armies, and
their galleys, the islands, the sea, and their wide-extended power, partly over other Greeks and partly over
barbarians, and all that empire, which they possessed, founded and fortified upon subject nations and royal friendships
and alliances.

After this he was no longer the same man he had been before, nor as tame and gentle and familiar as formerly with
the populace, so as readily to yield to their pleasures and to comply with the desires of the multitude, as a steersman
shifts with the winds. Quitting that loose, remiss, and, in some cases, licentious court of the popular will, he turned
those soft and flowery modulations to the austerity of aristocratical and regal rule; and employing this uprightly and
undeviatingly for the country’s best interests, he was able generally to lead the people along, with their own wills
and consents, by persuading and showing them what was to be done; and sometimes, too, urging and pressing them forward
extremely against their will, he made them, whether they would or no, yield submission to what was for their advantage.
In which, to say the truth, he did but like a skillful physician, who, in a complicated and chronic disease, as he sees
occasion, at one while allows his patient the moderate use of such things as please him, at another while gives him
keen pains and drugs to work the cure. For there arising and growing up, as was natural, all manner of distempered
feelings among a people which had so vast a command and dominion, he alone, as a great master, knowing how to handle
and deal fitly with each one of them, and, in an especial manner, making that use of hopes and fears, as his two chief
rudders, with the one to check the career of their confidence at any time, with the other to raise them up and cheer
them when under any discouragement, plainly showed by this, that rhetoric, or the art of speaking, is, in Plato’s
language, the government of the souls of men, and that her chief business is to address the affections and passions,
which are as it were the strings and keys to the soul, and require a skillful and careful touch to be played on as they
should be. The source of this predominance was not barely his power of language, but, as Thucydides assures us, the
reputation of his life, and the confidence felt in his character; his manifest freedom from every kind of corruption,
and superiority to all considerations of money. Notwithstanding he had made the city Athens, which was great of itself,
as great and rich as can be imagined, and though he were himself in power and interest more than equal to many kings
and absolute rulers, who some of them also bequeathed by will their power to their children, he, for his part, did not
make the patrimony his father left him greater than it was by one drachma.

Thucydides, indeed, gives a plain statement of the greatness of his power; and the comic poets, in their spiteful
manner, more than hint at it, styling his companions and friends the new Pisistratidae, and calling on him to abjure
any intention of usurpation, as one whose eminence was too great to be any longer proportionable to and compatible with
a democracy or popular government. And Teleclides says the

Athenians had surrendered up to him —

The tribute of the cities, and with them, the cities too, to do with them as he pleases, and undo; To build up, if
he likes, stone walls around a town; and again, if so he likes, to pull them down; Their treaties and alliances, power,
empire, peace, and war, their wealth and their success forevermore.

Nor was all this the luck of some happy occasion; nor was it the mere bloom and grace of a policy that flourished
for a season; but having for forty years together maintained the first place among statesmen such as Ephialtes and
Leocrates and Myronides and Cimon and Tolmides and Thucydides were, after the defeat and banishment of Thucydides, for
no less than fifteen years longer, in the exercise of one continuous unintermitted command in the office, to which he
was annually reelected, of General, he preserved his integrity unspotted; though otherwise he was not altogether idle
or careless in looking after his pecuniary advantage; his paternal estate, which of right belonged to him, he so
ordered that it might neither through negligence be wasted or lessened, nor yet, being so full of business as he was,
cost him any great trouble or time with taking care of it; and put it into such a way of management as he thought to be
the most easy for himself, and the most exact. All his yearly products and profits he sold together in a lump, and
supplied his household needs afterward by buying everything that he or his family wanted out of the market. Upon which
account, his children, when they grew to age, were not well pleased with his management, and the women that lived with
him were treated with little cost, and complained of this way of housekeeping, where everything was ordered and set
down from day to day, and reduced to the greatest exactness; since there was not there, as is usual in a great family
and a plentiful estate, any thing to spare, or over and above; but all that went out or came in, all disbursements and
all receipts, proceeded as it were by number and measure. His manager in all this was a single servant, Evangelus by
name, a man either naturally gifted or instructed by Pericles so as to excel every one in this art of domestic
economy.

All this, in truth, was very little in harmony with Anaxagoras’s wisdom; if, indeed, it be true that he, by a kind
of divine impulse and greatness of spirit, voluntarily quitted his house, and left his land to lie fallow and to be
grazed by sheep like a common. But the life of a contemplative philosopher and that of an active statesman are, I
presume, not the same thing; for the one merely employs, upon great and good objects of thought, an intelligence that
requires no aid of instruments nor supply of any external materials; whereas the other, who tempers and applies his
virtue to human uses, may have occasion for affluence, not as a matter of mere necessity, but as a noble thing; which
was Pericles’s case, who relieved numerous poor citizens.

However, there is a story, that Anaxagoras himself, while Pericles was taken up with public affairs, lay neglected,
and that, now being grown old, he wrapped himself up with a resolution to die for want of food; which being by chance
brought to Pericles’s ear, he was horror-struck, and instantly ran thither, and used all the arguments and entreaties
he could to him, lamenting not so much Anaxagoras’s condition as his own, should he lose such a counselor as he had
found him to be; and that, upon this, Anaxagoras unfolded his robe, and showing himself, made answer: “Pericles,” said
he, “even those who have occasion for a lamp supply it with oil.”

The Lacedaemonians beginning to show themselves troubled at the growth of the Athenian power, Pericles, on the other
hand, to elevate the people’s spirit yet more, and to raise them to the thought of great actions, proposed a decree, to
summon all the Greeks in what part soever, whether of Europe or Asia, every city, little as well as great, to send
their deputies to Athens to a general assembly, or convention, there to consult and advise concerning the Greek temples
which the barbarians had burnt down, and the sacrifices which were due from them upon vows they had made to their gods
for the safety of Greece when they fought against the barbarians; and also concerning the navigation of the sea, that
they might henceforward all of them pass to and fro and trade securely, and be at peace among themselves.

Upon this errand, there were twenty men, of such as were above fifty years of age, sent by commission; five to
summon the Ionians and Dorians in Asia, and the islanders as far as Lesbos and Rhodes; five to visit all the places in
the Hellespont and Thrace, up to Byzantium; and other five besides these to go to Boeotia and Phocis and Peloponnesus,
and from hence to pass through the Locrians over to the neighboring continent, as far as Acarnania and Ambracia; and
the rest to take their course through Euboea to the Oetaeans and the Malian Gulf, and to the Achaeans of Phthiotis and
the Thessalians; all of them to treat with the people as they passed, and to persuade them to come and take their part
in the debates for settling the peace and jointly regulating the affairs of Greece.

Nothing was effected, nor did the cities meet by their deputies, as was desired; the Lacedaemonians, as it is said,
crossing the design underhand, and the attempt being disappointed and baffled first in Peloponnesus. I thought fit,
however, to introduce the mention of it, to show the spirit of the man and the greatness of his thoughts.

In his military conduct, he gained a great reputation for wariness; he would not by his good-will engage in any
fight which had much uncertainty or hazard; he did not envy the glory of generals whose rash adventures fortune favored
with brilliant success, however they were admired by others; nor did he think them worthy his imitation, but always
used to say to his citizens that, so far as lay in his power, they should continue immortal, and live forever. Seeing
Tolmides, the son of Tolmaeus, upon the confidence of his former successes, and flushed with the honor his military
actions had procured him, making preparation to attack the Boeotians in their own country, when there was no likely
opportunity, and that he had prevailed with the bravest and most enterprising of the youth to enlist themselves as
volunteers in the service, who besides his other force made up a thousand, he endeavored to withhold him and to advise
him from it in the public assembly, telling him in a memorable saying of his, which still goes about, that, if he would
not take Pericles’s advice, yet he would not do amiss to wait and be ruled by time, the wisest counselor of all. This
saying, at that time, was but slightly commended; but within a few days after, when news was brought that Tolmides
himself had been defeated and slain in battle near Coronea, and that many brave citizens had fallen with him, it gained
him great repute as well as good-will among the people, for wisdom and for love of his countrymen.

But of all his expeditions, that to the Chersonese gave most satisfaction and pleasure, having proved the safety of
the Greeks who inhabited there. For not only by carrying along with him a thousand fresh citizens of Athens he gave new
strength and vigor to the cities, but also by belting the neck of land, which joins the peninsula to the continent,
with bulwarks and forts from sea to sea, he put a stop to the inroads of the Thracians, who lay all about the
Chersonese, and closed the door against a continual and grievous war, with which that country had been long harassed,
lying exposed to the encroachments and influx of barbarous neighbors, and groaning under the evils of a predatory
population both upon and within its borders.

Nor was he less admired and talked of abroad for his sailing round the Peloponnesus, having set out from Pegae, or
The Fountains, the port of Megara, with a hundred galleys. For he not only laid waste the sea-coast, as Tolmides had
done before, but also, advancing far up into main land with the soldiers he had on board, by the terror of his
appearance drove many within their walls; and at Nemea, with main force, routed and raised a trophy over the
Sicyonians, who stood their ground and joined battle with him. And having taken on board a supply of soldiers into the
galleys, out of Achaia, then in league with Athens he crossed with the fleet to the opposite continent, and, sailing
along by the mouth of the river Achelous overran Acarnania, and shut up the Oeniadae within their city walls, and
having ravaged and wasted their country, weighed anchor for home with the double advantage of having shown himself
formidable to his enemies, and at the same time safe and energetic to his fellow-citizens; for there was not so much as
any chance-miscarriage that happened, the whole voyage through, to those who were under his charge.

Entering also the Euxine Sea with a large and finely equipped fleet, he obtained for the Greek cities any new
arrangements they wanted, and entered into friendly relations with them; and to the barbarous nations, and kings and
chiefs round about them, displayed the greatness of the power of the Athenians, their perfect ability and confidence to
sail wherever they had a mind, and to bring the whole sea under their control. He left the Sinopians thirteen ships of
war, with soldiers under the command of Lamachus, to assist them against Timesileus the tyrant; and when he and his
accomplices had been thrown out, obtained a decree that six hundred of the Athenians that were willing should sail to
Sinope and plant themselves there with the Sinopians, sharing among them the houses and land which the tyrant and his
party had previously held.

But in other things he did not comply with the giddy impulses of the citizens, nor quit his own resolutions to
follow their fancies, when, carried away with the thought of their strength and great success, they were eager to
interfere again in Egypt, and to disturb the king of Persia’s maritime dominions. Nay, there were a good many who were,
even then, possessed with that unblessed and inauspicious passion for Sicily, which afterward the orators of
Alcibiades’s party blew up into a flame. There were some also who dreamt of Tuscany and of Carthage, and not without
plausible reason in their present large dominion and the prosperous course of their affairs.

But Pericles curbed this passion for foreign conquest, and unsparingly pruned and cut down their ever busy fancies
for a multitude of undertakings; and directed their power for the most part to securing and consolidating what they had
already got, supposing it would be quite enough for them to do, if they could keep the Lacedaemonians in check; to whom
he entertained all along a sense of opposition; which, as upon many other occasions, so he particularly showed by what
he did in the time of the holy war. The Lacedaemonians, having gone with an army to Delphi, restored Apollo’s temple,
which the Phocians had got into their possession, to the Delphians; immediately after their departure, Pericles, with
another army, came and restored the Phocians. And the Lacedaemonians having engraven the record of their privilege of
consulting the oracle before others, which the Delphians gave them, upon the forehead of the brazen wolf which stands
there, he, also, having received from the Phocians the like privilege for the Athenians, had it cut upon the same wolf
of brass on his right side.

That he did well and wisely in thus restraining the exertions of the Athenians within the compass of Greece, the
events themselves that happened afterward bore sufficient witness. For, in the first place, the Euboeans revolted,
against whom he passed over with forces; and then, immediately after, news came that the Megarians were turned their
enemies, and a hostile army was upon the borders of Attica, under the conduct of Plistoanax, king of the
Lacedaemonians. Wherefore Pericles came with his army back again in all haste out of Euboea, to meet the war which
threatened at home; and did not venture to engage a numerous and brave army eager for battle; but perceiving that
Plistoanax was a very young man, and governed himself mostly by the counsel and advice of Cleandrides, whom the ephors
had sent with him, by reason of his youth, to be a kind of guardian and assistant to him, he privately made trial of
this man’s integrity, and, in a short time, having corrupted him with money, prevailed with him to withdraw the
Peloponnesians out of Attica. When the army had retired and dispersed into their several states, the Lacedaemonians in
anger fined their king in so large a sum of money, that, unable to pay it, he quitted Lacedaemon; while Cleandrides
fled, and had sentence of death passed upon him in his absence. This was the father of Gylippus, who overpowered the
Athenians in Sicily. And it seems that this covetousness was an hereditary disease transmitted from father to son; for
Gylippus also afterwards was caught in foul practices, and expelled from Sparta for it. But this we have told at large
in the account of Lysander.

When Pericles, in giving up his accounts of this expedition, stated a disbursement of ten talents, as laid out upon
fit occasion, the people, without any question, nor troubling themselves to investigate the mystery, freely allowed of
it. And some historians, in which number is Theophrastus the philosopher, have given it as a truth that Pericles every
year used to send privately the sum of ten talents to Sparta, with which he complimented those in office, to keep off
the war; not to purchase peace neither, but time, that he might prepare at leisure, and be the better able to carry on
war hereafter.

Immediately after this, turning his forces against the revolters, and passing over into the island of Euboea with
fifty sail of ships and five thousand men in arms, he reduced their cities, and drove out the citizens of the
Chalcidians, called Hippobotae, horse-feeders, the chief persons for wealth and reputation among them; and removing all
the Histiaeans out of the country, brought in a plantation of Athenians in their room; making them his one example of
severity, because they had captured an Attic ship and killed all on board.

After this, having made a truce between the Athenians and Lacedaemonians for thirty years, he ordered, by public
decree, the expedition against the Isle of Samos, on the ground, that, when they were bid to leave off their war with
the Milesians, they had not complied. And as these measures against the Samians are thought to have been taken to
please Aspasia, this may be a fit point for inquiry about the woman, what art or charming faculty she had that enabled
her to captivate, as she did, the greatest statesmen, and to give the philosophers occasion to speak so much about her,
and that, too, not to her disparagement. That she was a Milesian by birth, the daughter of Axiochus, is a thing
acknowledged. And they say it was in emulation of Thargelia, a courtesan of the old Ionian times, that she made her
addresses to men of great power. Thargelia was a great beauty, extremely charming, and at the same time sagacious; she
had numerous suitors among the Greeks, and brought all who had to do with her over to the Persian interest, and by
their means, being men of the greatest power and station, sowed the seeds of the Median faction up and down in several
cities. Aspasia, some say, was courted and caressed by Pericles upon account of her knowledge and skill in politics.
Socrates himself would sometimes go to visit her, and some of his acquaintance with him; and those who frequented her
company would carry their wives with them to listen to her. Her occupation was any thing but creditable, her house
being a home for young courtesans. Aeschines tells us also, that Lysicles, a sheep-dealer, a man of low birth and
character, by keeping Aspasia company after Pericles’s death, came to be a chief man in Athens. And in Plato’s
Menexenus, though we do not take the introduction as quite serious, still thus much seems to be historical, that she
had the repute of being resorted to by many of the Athenians for instruction in the art of speaking. Pericles’s
inclination for her seems, however, to have rather proceeded from the passion of love. He had a wife that was near of
kin to him, who had been married first to Hipponicus, by whom she had Callias, surnamed the Rich; and also she brought
Pericles, while she lived with him, two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus. Afterwards, when they did not well agree nor like
to live together, he parted with her, with her own consent, to another man, and himself took Aspasia, and loved her
with wonderful affection; every day, both as he went out and as he came in from the marketplace, he saluted and kissed
her.

In the comedies she goes by the nicknames of the new Omphale and Deianira, and again is styled Juno. Cratinus, in
downright terms, calls her a harlot.

To find him a Juno the goddess of lust
Bore that harlot past shame,
Aspasia by name.

It should seem, also, that he had a son by her; Eupolis, in his Demi, introduced Pericles asking after his safety,
and Myronides replying,

“My son?” “He lives; a man he had been long, But that the harlot-mother did him wrong.”

Aspasia, they say, became so celebrated and renowned, that Cyrus also, who made war against Artaxerxes for the
Persian monarchy, gave her whom he loved the best of all his concubines the name of Aspasia, who before that was called
Milto. She was a Phocaean by birth, the daughter of one Hermotimus, and, when Cyrus fell in battle, was carried to the
king, and had great influence at court. These things coming into my memory as I am writing this story, it would be
unnatural for me to omit them.

Pericles, however, was particularly charged with having proposed to the assembly the war against the Samians, from
favor to the Milesians, upon the entreaty of Aspasia. For the two states were at war for the possession of Priene; and
the Samians, getting the better, refused to lay down their arms and to have the controversy betwixt them decided by
arbitration before the Athenians. Pericles, therefore, fitting out a fleet, went and broke up the oligarchical
government at Samos, and, taking fifty of the principal men of the town as hostages, and as many of their children,
sent them to the isle of Lemnos, there to be kept, though he had offers, as some relate, of a talent a piece for
himself from each one of the hostages, and of many other presents from those who were anxious not to have a democracy.
Moreover, Pissuthnes the Persian, one of the king’s lieutenants, bearing some good-will to the Samians, sent him ten
thousand pieces of gold to excuse the city. Pericles, however, would receive none of all this; but after he had taken
that course with the Samians which he thought fit, and set up a democracy among them, sailed back to Athens.

But they, however, immediately revolted, Pissuthnes having privily got away their hostages for them, and provided
them with means for the war. Whereupon Pericles came out with a fleet a second time against them, and found them not
idle nor slinking away, but manfully resolved to try for the dominion of the sea. The issue was, that, after a sharp
sea-fight about the island called Tragia, Pericles obtained a decisive victory, having with forty-four ships routed
seventy of the enemy’s, twenty of which were carrying soldiers.

Together with his victory and pursuit, having made himself master of the port, he laid siege to the Samians, and
blocked them up, who yet, one way or other, still ventured to make sallies, and fight under the city walls. But after
that another greater fleet from Athens was arrived, and that the Samians were now shut up with a close leaguer on every
side, Pericles, taking with him sixty galleys, sailed out into the main sea, with the intention, as most authors give
the account, to meet a squadron of Phoenician ships that were coming for the Samians’ relief, and to fight them at as
great distance as could be from the island; but, as Stesimbrotus says, with a design of putting over to Cyprus; which
does not seem to be probable. But whichever of the two was his intent, it seems to have been a miscalculation. For on
his departure, Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a philosopher, being at that time general in Samos, despising either the
small number of the ships that were left or the inexperience of the commanders, prevailed with the citizens to attack
the Athenians. And the Samians having won the battle, and taken several of the men prisoners, and disabled several of
the ships, were masters of the sea, and brought into port all necessaries they wanted for the war, which they had not
before. Aristotle says, too, that Pericles himself had been once before this worsted by this Melissus in a
sea-fight.

The Samians, that they might requite an affront which had before been put upon them, branded the Athenians, whom
they took prisoners, in their foreheads, with the figure of an owl. For so the Athenians had marked them before with a
Samaena, which is a sort of ship, low and flat in the prow, so as to look snub-nosed, but wide and large and
well-spread in the hold, by which it both carries a large cargo and sails well. And it was so called, because the first
of that kind was seen at Samos, having been built by order of Polycrates the tyrant. These brands upon the Samians’
foreheads, they say, are the allusion in the passage of Aristophanes, where he says, —

For, oh, the Samians are a lettered people.

Pericles, as soon as news was brought him of the disaster that had befallen his army, made all the haste he could to
come in to their relief, and having defeated Melissus, who bore up against him, and put the enemy to flight, he
immediately proceeded to hem them in with a wall, resolving to master them and take the town, rather with some cost and
time, than with the wounds and hazards of his citizens. But as it was a hard matter to keep back the Athenians, who
were vexed at the delay, and were eagerly bent to fight, he divided the whole multitude into eight parts, and arranged
by lot that that part which had the white bean should have leave to feast and take their ease, while the other seven
were fighting. And this is the reason, they say, that people, when at any time they have been merry, and enjoyed
themselves, call it white day, in allusion to this white bean.

Ephorus the historian tells us besides, that Pericles made use of engines of battery in this siege, being much taken
with the curiousness of the invention, with the aid and presence of Artemon himself, the engineer, who, being lame,
used to be carried about in a litter, where the works required his attendance, and for that reason was called
Periphoretus. But Heraclides Ponticus disproves this out of Anacreon’s poems, where mention is made of this Artemon
Periphoretus several ages before the Samian war, or any of these occurrences. And he says that Artemon, being a man who
loved his ease, and had a great apprehension of danger, for the most part kept close within doors, having two of his
servants to hold a brazen shield over his head, that nothing might fall upon him from above; and if he were at any time
forced upon necessity to go abroad, that he was carried about in a little hanging bed, close to the very ground, and
that for this reason he was called Periphoretus.

In the ninth month, the Samians surrendering themselves and delivering up the town, Pericles pulled down their
walls, and seized their shipping, and set a fine of a large sum of money upon them, part of which they paid down at
once, and they agreed to bring in the rest by a certain time, and gave hostages for security. Duris the Samian makes a
tragical drama out of these events, charging the Athenians and Pericles with a great deal of cruelty, which neither
Thucydides, nor Ephorus, nor Aristotle have given any relation of, and probably with little regard to truth; how, for
example, he brought the captains and soldiers of the galleys into the market-place at Miletus, and there having bound
them fast to boards for ten days, then, when they were already all but half dead, gave order to have them killed by
beating out their brains with clubs, and their dead bodies to be flung out into the open streets and fields, unburied.
Duris, however, who even where he has no private feeling concerned, is not wont to keep his narrative within the limits
of truth, is the more likely upon this occasion to have exaggerated the calamities which befell his country, to create
odium against the Athenians. Pericles, however, after the reduction of Samos, returning back to Athens, took care that
those who died in the war should be honorably buried, and made a funeral harangue, as the custom is, in their
commendation at their graves, for which he gained great admiration. As he came down from the stage on which he spoke,
the rest of the women came and complimented him, taking him by the hand, and crownings him with garlands and ribbons,
like a victorious athlete in the games; but Elpinice, coming near to him, said, “These are brave deeds, Pericles, that
you have done, and such as deserve our chaplets; who have lost us many a worthy citizen, not in a war with Phoenicians
or Medes, like my brother Cimon, but for the overthrow of an allied and kindred city.” As Elpinice spoke these words,
he, smiling quietly, as it is said, returned her answer with this verse, —

Old women should not seek to be perfumed.

Ion says of him, that, upon this exploit of his, conquering the Samians, he indulged very high and proud thoughts of
himself: whereas Agamemnon was ten years taking a barbarous city, he had in nine months’ time vanquished and taken the
greatest and most powerful of the Ionians. And indeed it was not without reason that he assumed this glory to himself,
for, in real truth, there was much uncertainty and great hazard in this war, if so be, as Thucydides tells us, the
Samian state were within a very little of wresting the whole power and dominion of the sea out of the Athenians’
hands.

After this was over, the Peloponnesian war beginning to break out in full tide, he advised the people to send help
to the Corcyrseans, who were attacked by the Corinthians, and to secure to themselves an island possessed of great
naval resources, since the Peloponnesians were already all but in actual hostilities against them. The people readily
consenting to the motion, and voting an aid and succor for them, he dispatched Lacedaemonius, Cimon’s son, having only
ten ships with him, as it were out of a design to affront him; for there was a great kindness and friendship betwixt
Cimon’s family and the Lacedaemonians; so, in order that Lacedaemonius might lie the more open to a charge, or
suspicion at least, of favoring the Lacedaemonians and playing false, if he performed no considerable exploit in this
service, he allowed him a small number of ships, and sent him out against his will; and indeed he made it somewhat his
business to hinder Cimon’s sons from rising in the state, professing that by their very names they were not to be
looked upon as native and true Athenians, but foreigners and strangers, one being called Lacedaemonius, another
Thessalus, and the third Eleus; and they were all three of them, it was thought, born of an Arcadian woman. Being,
however, ill spoken of on account of these ten galleys, as having afforded but a small supply to the people that were
in need, and yet given a great advantage to those who might complain of the act of intervention, Pericles sent out a
larger force afterward to Corcyra, which arrived after the fight was over. And when now the Corinthians, angry and
indignant with the Athenians, accused them publicly at Lacedaemon, the Megarians joined with them, complaining that
they were, contrary to common right and the articles of peace sworn to among the Greeks, kept out and driven away from
every market and from all ports under the control of the Athenians. The Aeginetans, also, professing to be ill-used and
treated with violence, made supplications in private to the Lacedaemonians for redress, though not daring openly to
call the Athenians in question. In the meantime, also, the city Potidaea, under the dominion of the Athenians, but a
colony formerly of the Corinthians, had revolted, and was beset with a formal siege, and was a further occasion of
precipitating the war.

Yet notwithstanding all this, there being embassies sent to Athens, and Archidamus, the king of the Lacedaemonians,
endeavoring to bring the greater part of the complaints and matters in dispute to a fair determination, and to pacify
and allay the heats of the allies, it is very likely that the war would not upon any other grounds of quarrel have
fallen upon the Athenians, could they have been prevailed with to repeal the ordinance against the Megarians, and to be
reconciled to them. Upon which account, since Pericles was the man who mainly opposed it, and stirred up the people’s
passions to persist in their contention with the Megarians, he was regarded as the sole cause of the war.

They say, moreover, that ambassadors went, by order from Lacedaemon to Athens about this very business, and that
when Pericles was urging a certain law which made it illegal to take down or withdraw the tablet of the decree, one of
the ambassadors, Polyalces by name, said, “Well, do not take it down then, but turn it; there is no law, I suppose,
which forbids that;” which, though prettily said, did not move Pericles from his resolution. There may have been, in
all likelihood, something of a secret grudge and private animosity which he had against the Megarians. Yet, upon a
public and open charge against them, that they had appropriated part of the sacred land on the frontier, he proposed a
decree that a herald should be sent to them, and the same also to the Lacedaemonians, with an accusation of the
Megarians; an order which certainly shows equitable and friendly proceeding enough. And after that the herald who was
sent, by name Anthemocritus, died, and it was believed that the Megarians had contrived his death, then Charinus
proposed a decree against them, that there should be an irreconcilable and implacable enmity thenceforward betwixt the
two commonwealths; and that if any one of the Megarians should but set his foot in Attica, he should be put to death;
and that the commanders, when they take the usual oath, should, over and above that, swear that they will twice every
year make an inroad into the Megarian country; and that Anthemocritus should be buried near the Thriasian Gates, which
are now called the Dipylon, or Double Gate.

On the other hand, the Megarians, utterly denying and disowning the murder of Anthemocritus, throw the whole matter
upon Aspasia and Pericles, availing themselves of the famous verses in the Acharnians,

To Megara some of our madcaps ran,
And stole Simaetha thence, their courtesan.
Which exploit the Megarians to outdo,
Came to Aspasia’s house, and took off two.

The true occasion of the quarrel is not so easy to find out. But of inducing the refusal to annul the decree, all
alike charge Pericles. Some say he met the request with a positive refusal, out of high spirit and a view of the
state’s best interests, accounting that the demand made in those embassies was designed for a trial of their
compliance, and that a concession would be taken for a confession of weakness, as if they durst not do otherwise; while
other some there are who say that it was rather out of arrogance and a willful spirit of contention, to show his own
strength, that he took occasion to slight the Lacedaemonians. The worst motive of all, which is confirmed by most
witnesses, is to the following effect. Phidias the Molder had, as has before been said, undertaken to make the statue
of Minerva. Now he, being admitted to friendship with Pericles, and a great favorite of his, had many enemies upon this
account, who envied and maligned him; who also, to make trial in a case of his, what kind of judges the commons would
prove, should there be occasion to bring Pericles himself before them, having tampered with Menon, one who had been a
workman with Phidias, stationed him ill the market-place, with a petition desiring public security upon his discovery
and impeachment of Phidias. The people admitting the man to tell his story, and the prosecution proceeding in the
assembly, there was nothing of theft or cheat proved against him; for Phidias, from the very first beginning, by the
advice of Pericles, had so wrought and wrapt the gold that was used in the work about the statue, that they might take
it all off and make out the just weight of it, which Pericles at that time bade the accusers do. But the reputation of
his works was what brought envy upon Phidias, especially that where he represents the fight of the Amazons upon the
goddesses’ shield, he had introduced a likeness of himself as a bald old man holding up a great stone with both hands,
and had put in a very fine representation of Pericles fighting with an Amazon. And the position of the hand, which
holds out the spear in front of the face, was ingeniously contrived to conceal in some degree the likeness, which,
meantime, showed itself on either side.

Phidias then was carried away to prison, and there died of a disease; but, as some say, of poison, administered by
the enemies of Pericles, to raise a slander, or a suspicion, at least, as though he had procured it. The informer
Menon, upon Glycon’s proposal, the people made free from payment of taxes and customs, and ordered the generals to take
care that nobody should do him any hurt. About the same time, Aspasia was indicted of impiety, upon the complaint of
Hermippus the comedian, who also laid further to her charge that she received into her house freeborn women for the
uses of Pericles. And Diopithes proposed a decree, that public accusation should be laid against persons who neglected
religion, or taught new doctrines about things above, directing suspicion, by means of Anaxagoras, against Pericles
himself. The people receiving and admitting these accusations and complaints, at length, by this means, they came to
enact a decree, at the motion of Dracontides, that Pericles should bring in the accounts of the moneys he had expended,
and lodge them with the Prytanes; and that the judges, carrying their suffrage from the altar in the Acropolis, should
examine and determine the business in the city. This last clause Hagnon took out of the decree, and moved that the
causes should be tried before fifteen hundred jurors, whether they should be styled prosecutions for robbery, or
bribery, or any kind of malversation. Aspasia, Pericles begged off, shedding, as Aeschines says, many tears at the
trial, and personally entreating the jurors. But fearing how it might go with Anaxagoras, he sent him out of the city.
And finding that in Phidias’s case he had miscarried with the people, being afraid of impeachment, he kindled the war,
which hitherto had lingered and smothered, and blew it up into a flame; hoping, by that means, to disperse and scatter
these complaints and charges, and to allay their jealousy; the city usually throwing herself upon him alone, and
trusting to his sole conduct, upon the urgency of great affairs and public dangers, by reason of his authority and the
sway he bore.

These are given out to have been the reasons which induced Pericles not to suffer the people of Athens to yield to
the proposals of the

Lacedaemonians; but their truth is uncertain.

The Lacedaemonians, for their part, feeling sure that if they could once remove him, they might be at what terms
they pleased with the Athenians, sent them word that they should expel the “Pollution” with which Pericles on the
mother’s side was tainted, as Thucydides tells us. But the issue proved quite contrary to what those who sent the
message expected; instead of bringing Pericles under suspicion and reproach, they raised him into yet greater credit
and esteem with the citizens, as a man whom their enemies most hated and feared. In the same way, also, before
Archidamus, who was at the head of the Peloponnesians, made his invasion into Attica, he told the Athenians beforehand,
that if Archidamus, while he laid waste the rest of the country, should forbear and spare his estate, either on the
ground of friendship or right of hospitality that was betwixt them, or on purpose to give his enemies an occasion of
traducing him, that then he did freely bestow upon the state all that his land and the buildings upon it for the public
use. The Lacedaemonians, therefore, and their allies, with a great army, invaded the Athenian territories, under the
conduct of king Archidamus, and laying waste the country, marched on as far as Acharnae, and there pitched their camp,
presuming that the Athenians would never endure that, but would come out and fight them for their country’s and their
honor’s sake. But Pericles looked upon it as dangerous to engage in battle, to the risk of the city itself, against
sixty thousand men-at-arms of Peloponnesians and Boeotians; for so many they were in number that made the inroad at
first; and he endeavored to appease those who were desirous to fight, and were grieved and discontented to see how
things went, and gave them good words, saying, that “trees, when they are lopped and cut, grow up again in a short time
but men, being once lost, cannot easily be recovered.” He did not convene the people into an assembly, for fear lest
they should force him to act against his judgment; but, like a skillful steersman or pilot of a ship, who, when a
sudden squall comes on, out at sea, makes all his arrangements, sees that all is tight and fast, and then follows the
dictates of his skill, and minds the business of the ship, taking no notice of the tears and entreaties of the sea-sick
and fearful passengers, so he, having shut up the city gates, and placed guards at all posts for security, followed his
own reason and judgment, little regarding those that cried out against him and were angry at his management, although
there were a great many of his friends that urged him with requests, and many of his enemies threatened and accused him
for doing as he did, and many made songs and lampoons upon him, which were sung about the town to his disgrace,
reproaching him with the cowardly exercise of his office of general, and the tame abandonment of everything to the
enemy’s hands.

Cleon, also, already was among his assailants, making use of the feeling against him as a step to the leadership of
the people, as appears in the anapaestic verses of Hermippus.

Satyr-king, instead of swords,
Will you always handle words?
Very brave indeed we find them,
But a Teles lurks behind them.

Pericles, however, was not at all moved by any attacks, but took all patiently, and submitted in silence to the
disgrace they threw upon him and the ill-will they bore him; and, sending out a fleet of a hundred galleys to
Peloponnesus, he did not go along with it in person, but stayed behind, that he might watch at home and keep the city
under his own control, till the Peloponnesians broke up their camp and were gone. Yet to soothe the common people,
jaded and distressed with the war, he relieved them with distributions of public moneys, and ordained new divisions of
subject land. For having turned out all the people of Aegina, he parted the island among the Athenians, according to
lot. Some comfort, also, and ease in their miseries, they might receive from what their enemies endured. For the fleet,
sailing round the Peloponnese, ravaged a great deal of the country, and pillaged and plundered the towns and smaller
cities; and by land he himself entered with an army the Megarian country, and made havoc of it all. Whence it is clear
that the Peloponnesians, though they did the Athenians much mischief by land, yet suffering as much themselves from
them by sea, would not have protracted the war to such a length, but would quickly have given it over, as Pericles at
first foretold they would, had not some divine power crossed human purposes.

In the first place, the pestilential disease, or plague, seized upon the city, and ate up all the flower and prime
of their youth and strength. Upon occasion of which, the people, distempered and afflicted in their souls, as well as
in their bodies, were utterly enraged like madmen against Pericles, and, like patients grown delirious, sought to lay
violent hands on their physician, or, as it were, their father. They had been possessed, by his enemies, with the
belief that the occasion of the plague was the crowding of the country people together into the town, forced as they
were now, in the heat of the summer-weather, to dwell many of them together even as they could, in small tenements and
stifling hovels, and to be tied to a lazy course of life within doors, whereas before they lived in a pure, open, and
free air. The cause and author of all this, said they, is he who on account of the war has poured a multitude of people
from the country in upon us within the walls, and uses all these many men that he has here upon no employ or service,
but keeps them pent up like cattle, to be overrun with infection from one another, affording them neither shift of
quarters nor any refreshment.

With the design to remedy these evils, and do the enemy some inconvenience, Pericles got a hundred and fifty galleys
ready, and having embarked many tried soldiers, both foot and horse, was about to sail out, giving great hope to his
citizens, and no less alarm to his enemies, upon the sight of so great a force. And now the vessels having their
complement of men, and Pericles being gone aboard his own galley, it happened that the sun was eclipsed, and it grew
dark on a sudden, to the affright of all, for this was looked upon as extremely ominous. Pericles, therefore,
perceiving the steersman seized with fear and at a loss what to do, took his cloak and held it up before the man’s
face, and, screening him with it so that he could not see, asked him whether he imagined there was any great hurt, or
the sign of any great hurt in this, and he answering No, “Why,” said he, “and what does that differ from this, only
that what has caused that darkness there, is something greater than a cloak?” This is a story which philosophers tell
their scholars. Pericles, however after putting out to sea, seems not to have done any other exploit befitting such
preparations, and when he had laid siege to the holy city Epidaurus, which gave him some hope of surrender, miscarried
in his design by reason of the sickness. For it not only seized upon the Athenians, but upon all others, too, that held
any sort of communication with the army. Finding after this the Athenians ill affected and highly displeased with him,
he tried and endeavored what he could to appease and re-encourage them. But he could not pacify or allay their anger,
nor persuade or prevail with them any way, till they freely passed their votes upon him, resumed their power, took away
his command from him, and fined him in a sum of money; which, by their account that say least, was fifteen talents,
while they who reckon most, name fifty. The name prefixed to the accusation was Cleon, as Idomeneus tells us; Simmias,
according to Theophrastus; and Heraclides Ponticus gives it as Lacratidas.

After this, public troubles were soon to leave him unmolested; the people, so to say, discharged their passion in
their stroke, and lost their stings in the wound. But his domestic concerns were in an unhappy condition many of his
friends and acquaintance having died in the plague time, and those of his family having long since been in disorder and
in a kind of mutiny against him. For the eldest of his lawfully begotten sons, Xanthippus by name, being naturally
prodigal, and marrying a young and expensive wife, the daughter of Tisander, son of Epilycus, was highly offended at
his father’s economy in making him but a scanty allowance, by little and little at a time. He sent, therefore, to a
friend one day, and borrowed some money of him in his father Pericles’s name, pretending it was by his order. The man
coming afterward to demand the debt, Pericles was so far from yielding to pay it, that he entered an action against
him. Upon which the young man, Xanthippus, thought himself so ill used and disobliged, that he openly reviled his
father; telling first, by way of ridicule, stories about his conversations at home, and the discourses he had with the
sophists and scholars that came to his house. As for instance, how one who was a practicer of the five games of skill,
having with a dart or javelin unawares against his will struck and killed Epitimus the Pharsalian, his father spent a
whole day with Protagoras in a serious dispute, whether the javelin, or the man that threw it, or the masters of the
games who appointed these sports, were, according to the strictest and best reason, to be accounted the cause of this
mischance. Besides this, Stesimbrotus tells us that it was Xanthippus who spread abroad among the people the infamous
story concerning his own wife; and in general that this difference of the young man’s with his father, and the breach
betwixt them, continued never to be healed or made up till his death. For Xanthippus died in the plague time of the
sickness. At which time Pericles also lost his sister, and the greatest part of his relations and friends, and those
who had been most useful and serviceable to him in managing the affairs of state. However, he did not shrink or give in
upon these occasions, nor betray or lower his high spirit and the greatness of his mind under all his misfortunes; he
was not even so much as seen to weep or to mourn, or even attend the burial of any of his friends or relations, till at
last he lost his only remaining legitimate son. Subdued by this blow and yet striving still, as far as he could, to
maintain his principle and to preserve and keep up the greatness of his soul when he came, however, to perform the
ceremony of putting a garland of flowers upon the head of the corpse, he was vanquished by his passion at the sight, so
that he burst into exclamations, and shed copious tears, having never done any such thing in all his life before.

The city having made trial of other generals for the conduct of war, and orators for business of state, when they
found there was no one who was of weight enough for such a charge, or of authority sufficient to be trusted with so
great a command, regretted the loss of him, and invited him again to address and advise them, and to reassume the
office of general. He, however, lay at home in dejection and mourning; but was persuaded by Alcibiades and others of
his friends to come abroad and show himself to the people; who having, upon his appearance, made their acknowledgments,
and apologized for their untowardly treatment of him, he undertook the public affairs once more; and, being chosen
general, requested that the statute concerning base-born children, which he himself had formerly caused to be made,
might be suspended; that so the name and race of his family might not, for absolute want of a lawful heir to succeed,
be wholly lost and extinguished. The case of the statute was thus: Pericles, when long ago at the height of his power
in the state, having then, as has been said, children lawfully begotten, proposed a law that those only should be
reputed true citizens of Athens who were born of such parents as were both Athenians. After this, the king of Egypt
having sent to the people, by way of present, forty thousand bushels of wheat, which were to be shared out among the
citizens, a great many actions and suits about legitimacy occurred, by virtue of that edict; cases which, till that
time, had not been known nor taken notice of; and several persons suffered by false accusations. There were little less
than five thousand who were convicted and sold for slaves; those who, enduring the test, remained in the government and
passed muster for true Athenians were found upon the poll to be fourteen thousand and forty persons in number.

It looked strange, that a law, which had been carried so far against so many people, should be canceled again by the
same man that made it; yet the present calamity and distress which Pericles labored under in his family broke through
all objections, and prevailed with the Athenians to pity him, as one whose losses and misfortunes had sufficiently
punished his former arrogance and haughtiness. His sufferings deserved, they thought, their pity, and even indignation,
and his request was such as became a man to ask and men to grant; they gave him permission to enroll his son in the
register of his fraternity, giving him his own name. This son afterward, after having defeated the Peloponnesians at
Arginusae, was, with his fellow-generals, put to death by the people.

About the time when his son was enrolled, it should seem, the plague seized Pericles, not with sharp and violent
fits, as it did others that had it, but with a dull and lingering distemper, attended with various changes and
alterations, leisurely, by little and little, wasting the strength of his body, and undermining the noble faculties of
his soul. So that Theophrastus, in his Morals, when discussing whether men’s characters change with their
circumstances, and their moral habits, disturbed by the ailings of their bodies, start aside from the rules of virtue,
has left it upon record, that Pericles, when he was sick, showed one of his friends that came to visit him, an amulet
or charm that the women had hung about his neck; as much as to say, that he was very sick indeed when he would admit of
such a foolery as that was.

When he was now near his end, the best of the citizens and those of his friends who were left alive, sitting about
him, were speaking of the greatness of his merit, and his power, and reckoning up his famous actions and the number of
his victories; for there were no less than nine trophies, which, as their chief commander and conqueror of their
enemies, he had set up, for the honor of the city. They talked thus together among themselves, as though he were unable
to understand or mind what they said, but had now lost his consciousness. He had listened, however, all the while, and
attended to all, and speaking out among them, said, that he wondered they should commend and take notice of things
which were as much owing to fortune as to anything else, and had happened to many other commanders, and, at the same
time, should not speak or make mention of that which was the most excellent and greatest thing of all. “For,” said he,
“no Athenian, through my means, ever wore mourning.”

He was indeed a character deserving our high admiration, not only for his equitable and mild temper, which all along
in the many affairs of his life, and the great animosities which he incurred, he constantly maintained; but also for
the high spirit and feeling which made him regard it the noblest of all his honors that, in the exercise of such
immense power, he never had gratified his envy or his passion, nor ever had treated any enemy as irreconcilably opposed
to him. And to me it appears that this one thing gives that otherwise childish and arrogant title a fitting and
becoming significance; so dispassionate a temper, a life so pure and unblemished, in the height of power and place,
might well be called Olympian, in accordance with our conceptions of the divine beings, to whom, as the natural authors
of all good and of nothing evil, we ascribe the rule and government of the world. Not as the poets represent, who,
while confounding us with their ignorant fancies, are themselves confuted by their own poems and fictions, and call the
place, indeed, where they say the gods make their abode, a secure and quiet seat, free from all hazards and commotions,
untroubled with winds or with clouds, and equally through all time illumined with a soft serenity and a pure light, as
though such were a home most agreeable for a blessed and immortal nature; and yet, in the meanwhile, affirm that the
gods themselves are full of trouble and enmity and anger and other passions, which no way become or belong to even men
that have any understanding. But this will, perhaps, seem a subject fitter for some other consideration, and that ought
to be treated of in some other place.

The course of public affairs after his death produced a quick and speedy sense of the loss of Pericles. Those who,
while he lived, resented his great authority, as that which eclipsed themselves, presently after his quitting the
stage, making trial of other orators and demagogues, readily acknowledged that there never had been in nature such a
disposition as his was, more moderate and reasonable in the height of that state he took upon him, or more grave and
impressive in the mildness which he used. And that invidious arbitrary power, to which formerly they gave the name of
monarchy and tyranny, did then appear to have been the chief bulwark of public safety; so great a corruption and such a
flood of mischief and vice followed, which he, by keeping weak and low, had withheld from notice, and had prevented
from attaining incurable height through a licentious impunity.